


Detours: Perdition Redux

by UprightIguana



Category: Farscape, Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-12
Updated: 2004-08-12
Packaged: 2019-04-29 12:00:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14472315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UprightIguana/pseuds/UprightIguana
Summary: Reaver territory and wormholes don't mix well.





	Detours: Perdition Redux

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Firefly’s Glow](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Firefly%27s_Glow), and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Firefly's Glow collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/fireflysglow/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** Unlike it's predecessor, this isn't slash at all. This is dedicated to all who are Browncoat-Scapers, I know y'all are out there because so many of you were at the Comic Con 2004 in San Diego. And to Peach, first human eyes on this text.

  
Author's notes: Unlike it's predecessor, this isn't slash at all. This is dedicated to all who are Browncoat-Scapers, I know y'all are out there because so many of you were at the Comic Con 2004 in San Diego. And to Peach, first human eyes on this text.  


* * *

Detours: Perdition Redux

## Detours: Perdition Redux

The occupational hazards of the smuggling business was mainly the reason why Malcolm Reynolds found himself in the Perdition system again. Returning to the scene of past crime. No one was comfortable this far out on the Rim, but codified information had to be handed over to another crew away from the eyes and ears of the Alliance - old-fashioned low-tech scratchings on paper, because the Cortex could not be trusted and waves could be monitored. Coin, in a complicated three-way exchange, was his payment, and that was always good. For such a complicated op, things had gone suspiciously smooth. 

So - this was an end run. With Serenity parked in orbit around the primary, awaiting third party pickup of contraband, he took off solo in the shuttle towards the fiery malignant orb that was once named Lucia, now known as Perdition. Not for the first time, Mal had to admire the sheer audacity of the ugly little moon, throwing off the yoke of terra-forming and settlers all on its lonesome and returning to its original gaia configuration, spitting lava and methane and pyroclastic floes all the while in defiance of the almighty Alliance. 

You couldn't help but admire it. 

However, without anyone actually coming out and saying so, no one on the crew really wanted to return to Perdition. Their adventure there last time now made for a persistent aura of unease, and Mal knew not to push them. So, he called this one solo, and one-manned the shuttle to a quick connect in low orbit over Perdition with the swift cargo cutter, the Temujin, codes swapped for coin and a quick exit. Mal had worked with Raj and his crew on the Temujin before - trustworthy as smugglers go. The third party in this little swap-to was Monty and his crew, now on his way to make the hardware drop. 

Still and all, a small niggle of discomfort floated on the periphery of Mal's consciousness. This was close to Reaver territory, and the last time around, Serenity had to spit-lick the damn star, corona-crash an Omega and return to retrieve Simon and Jayne, all before Perdition's dawn. Their adventure had left everyone subtly and not so subtly altered. Since that time, his crew never mentioned that job, and Simon and Jayne were behaving oddish around each other - polite, almost _nice_ \- which was vaguely uneasy-making for everyone else. 

Mal found the eerie-ass pleasantness a little discomforting, but, like the others, said nothing. It wasn't altogether objectionable in theory, this lack of sniping and barbed comments, but all the same, Perdition and the run-in with the Reavers had an effect on his whole crew. 

Reavers anywhere in the 'verse put the fear of the black in folk. 

Some of the backwash was fairly agreeable; on a stop on the little outpost moon Xander, Wash was recognized at the seedy pilots' bar, admired and congratulated and thumped on the back for flippin' a U-ee around a G-class and making Reavers eat his wake. Apparently, Mal learned, that this was a holy grail amongst flyboys, if for no other reason than the stunt's high death-rate. Seemed that the crew of the Hovenweep had not wandered too far to observe the spectacular crashing splashdown of the doomed Omega, had hung around to see if they might be needed. Since then, the telling of the exploits of the little firefly became somewhat exaggerated and embellished. 

Port Royal on Xander was a pretty dusty crappy town, and Wash got to be the hero in it for a while. 

Mal had slipped the barkeep platinum credits and told him that Clara Hobarth and the crew of the Hovenweep would have drinks on him when next they came through Xander. He was not liking, however, that his Serenity was starting to nurse a reputation. Boosting drugs from a Core hospital and search-and-rescue ops on Niska's armed-to-the-teeth skyplex was bad enough. He preferred flying much further under the radar. But - reps were sometimes helpful. 

The Temujin took off, double drives burning prettily against the stars, disappearing quickly behind the orb of the moon. Mal eased the shuttle back into a high level orbit over the angry volcanic patchwork of unstable crust and magma, his plan to use one planetary circuit to give him a friendly shove back towards Serenity, cutting a few hours off his flight time and fuel consumption. He cruised over the shifting seas and sulfurous planes of Perdition, afforded the rare luxury of simply enjoying the view, skirting volcanic calderas and lava floes large enough to be visible from space. He didn't get to pilot often, but he could at least savor the rare solitude. 

Not only was he paid and Serenity could refuel, restock and maybe indulge in some non-essential repairs, but Raj had given him a small crate containing mulled wine from Persephone, spices from X'iangyi, char siu bao - sweet pork dumplings - from Bijan and a half-dozen bottles of cold Krne lager that Mal already had hording plans for. But the true prizes were Macintosh apples and Rainfield strawberries from the renowned agricultural fields of Chaparal. 

A gift from Monty, along with a note to Mal that the soupcatcher was on the way to being grown back. Mal took that for Monty's heart's recovery from being the latest in a long line of Mr. Yo-Saff-Brigits. 

He was so busy thinking about how thrilled his little Kaylee would be with the strawberries that he didn't see that innocuous little blue fold open in the space-time until it was too late. 

* * *

Sitting in the snug and friendly confines of the Farscape module, John Crichton directed his gaze on the blue vortex of the small proto-wormhole he'd rustled up. True, Dargo's ship could kick the module's ass any day of the week, but it was the module he felt safe in inside a wormhole. Still he eyeballed the phase readings every few microts out of habit - Aeryn would be royally pissed if he ended up soupified into a runny red jello... 

But that wasn't gonna happen. _My module jams in wormholes._

Still, the point of the exercise was to fine-tune the window of opportunity, so that he could better predict when to cut the displacement engine and high-tail it out of Dodge before wormy vacuumed up plasma and blew everything in the local planetary neighborhood to quasar-land. 

The module hummed with a deep resonance, turning his seat into a giant vibrating cushion, which was one of the more pleasant effects of wormhole surfing. Occasional rhythmic thumps rolled over the module from stem to stern, delineating real space windows. From near the entrance of the wormhole, these 'spokes' seemed compressed even in the fore-shortened tube of the proto wormhole. Phase readings were steady, and John Crichton could relax marginally. One last wormy blow-by, and then everyone was taking shore leave on the next pleasure planet. Not that the last experience on a pleasure planet involved much in the way of pleasure, unless conducting an infiltrate-search-and-rescue op was defined differently these days. 

Even though fishnets stockings had been involved... 

Nonetheless, he was going to enjoy this little bit of heaven-sent solitude. Moya seemed more than a little crowded these days, with everyone stewing in their own levels of angst. Not to mention that it hurt more than a little to be around Aeryn sometimes, even though he knew she loved him. But she was hurting, too, and he had to give her that. So, out wormhole surfing by himself, listening to the wormhole resonance vibrating the module, staring out at the now-familiar wormhole-blue twisty roller-coaster vortex, and no one yelling at him to fix something. 

_Heaven..._

In his little happy place, he didn't see the dark swooping shadow lope in through one of the spokes until he was practically crawling up its ass. In one breathless moment, he had reflexively jerked the module to the right, as if he were in the Thunderbird tooling too fast down Interstate 95. Even as he did it, he knew he had overcompensated, and jerked the throttle back the other way which only served to toss him ass over teakettle and hurtling toward a different open spoke. Dimly, he realized that the near-miss shadow had tried to avoid him as well, but their wakes and wave-fields were entangled, and before he knew it, both of them were tumbling into real space. 

He pulled up hard, trying to put more exhaust between him and the other vessel. The first irrational thought he had was that the wormhole serpent had followed him out, but halfway through his last tumble, he'd caught a glimpse of his near-accident. It was a large, ungainly ship, shaped like a fat cigar, that looked like it had been patched together by the criminally insane - he had a sudden and thoroughly unpleasant reminder of Rovhu and Kaarvok and one too many of his own self. The ship was old, ragged and patched, but inarguably dangerous-looking, spewing exhaust and fumes in erratic glowing plumes behind it. On one of the wings, a large magnetic grappling hook with its claws folded, a hand-painted symbol of jagged teeth just behind it. 

John had mere nano-moments to register all that before he banked sharply to the right and down. The sun of the system whipped blindingly by his port as he dropped hard to get out of the way of the careening craft, grateful that he was getting control of the module back. Still turning, a mottled yellow-and-black orb swept by his portal and he pointed the nose of the module at it, looking to drop her into a stabilizing orbit and slow him down so that his heart could stop trying to leap out of his chest. 

_In space, no one can hear you scream..._

"Sunday driver!" he snarled impotently, even as he began to drop further down into the thick orange atmosphere. 

And damn near hit a new vessel that appeared with shocking suddenness across his bow. 

"It's frelling Grand Central Station around here!" he swore, as he powered down sharply, dropping further back, hoping the module wouldn't stall in vacuum. 

He watched this new vessel as it suddenly jerked, compensated, and began to bank away. It wasn't the near-miss from the wormhole; this craft was only just a bit larger than the module, silver and bright in the sunlight. Some kind of shuttle. Which meant there was a bigger mother ship in the vicinity, but he couldn't think about that right now, because not hitting it was sort of paramount. 

The shuttle ahead of him dipped and banked, heading for landfall. He glanced out of the portal to check for landing sites. The sulfurous landscape looked dubious at best. But the small craft set a course for a strip of land that looked stable, in the twilight band of the little moon, flying over the night-side of the planet towards its brilliant blinding dawn. 

He tried his comm. "Aeryn? Pilot? Anybody out there?" 

The hiss of static was cracklingly loud, popping erratically. But he heard a voice. 

"-make landfall...follow...set down - " 

Dawn on the planet was glaringly bright. The landscape broiled and spewed lava in the heat of the sun, and it was obvious the shuttle pilot knew enough to land in the relatively stable patch of northern twilight in this world. 

For now, the other ship was nowhere to be seen. 

John dipped the wing of the module and followed. "Okey dokey, Smokey. I'm right behind ya." 

* * *

"No, I'm fine, Wash. Don't think we tapped hulls. I'm just setting down to eyeball her." Mal watched the looming horizon of Perdition, distractedly gratefully that his hands were still steady given the near-collision in unstable atmo. The shuttle stood, huffing and steaming, in the coolish dawn, reflecting the malevolent yellow of the landscape. 

"OK, Mal." Wash's voice cackled a little with static. "We'll make the drop-off and cruise by in a few hours." 

"Meantime, I'm going to check on my near-miss friend." Mal reached down and touched the pistol on his thigh, mostly for reassurance. "Oddest little dinghy I've ever seen, though." 

He reset the com and exited the shuttle, squinted upwards. The sulfurous sky glowed brightly in the heat of Perdition's growing dawn, but he could make out the small craft as it dropped low over the horizon, landing gear engaging beneath its short stubby body. It was even smaller than he thought, although it was nothing like he'd ever seen before. But the markings on the fuselage were - vaguely familiar. He stood a few steps from the open door of the shuttle and waited, watching as the other craft rolled to a stop. It used be white once, its forward wings and tailfins blackened as though it has spent too much time pond-skipping unfriendly atmo. It looked as if it had been through a few wars, its thrusters almost entirely black with soot, its wingtips charred and burnt. 

The dusty canopy popped open with a billowing of steam and smoke, and a rush of compressed air escaping. The man inside, dressed in black leathers and long-coat, pulled himself up out of the pilot's seat of the tiny battered craft. Mal noted that he was armed - an odd and dangerous-looking pistol strapped to his right thigh. Everything about him screamed an Alliance affiliation, the military hardware, the tense bearing - or, worse, another bounty hunter, another Jubal Early. He waited until they stood each by their craft, separated by a short stretch of yellow sand, eye to eye, before he reached, thought-quick, for his gun. 

In less than half of a heartbeat, he found himself staring down the black barrel of the other weapon that had been drawn as quickly and as deadly rock-steady. At the other end of the too-steady arm, icy blue eyes matched his own with the same just-being-cautious-don't-take-this-personal look. For the first time in a very long time, Mal Reynolds had been drawn, hip to eye, to an impasse. 

"Alliance?" 

The man in black shook his head. "Peacekeeper?" 

Mal chuckled dryly, completely without humor. He shook his head as well. "Independent, and not lookin' to change." 

The deadly tension seemed to ease around the leather-clad shoulders, as the man shifted his weight back a little, his gun-hand relaxing, but not dropping. 

"Name's John Crichton. Commander." The man was watching him, as if sizing him for some reaction to the moniker. 

Mal decided to go first with the whole lowering the gun. "Malcolm Reynolds. Captain." 

"You all right, Captain?" the man followed suit, dropping but not holstering. 

"Don't think there was a collision, but near enough. You?" 

John inclined his head in acknowledgement. "Didn't catch the license plate of that truck, did'ja?" 

Mal frowned a little, missing the reference entirely. Not that this was a reaction that Crichton was unused to. He looked up into the skies. 

"There was another craft." 

"What kind of craft?" 

"A big - _insane_ \- one." John held out his hands to indicate something sizable. "Had a frelling large - I dunno - grappling hook thing hamman-side." 

"Ta mah de." _Reavers,_ he thought. _Had to be._

But -- _Hamman-side_? 

Crichton's eyes narrowed. "So, not drinkin' buddies, I take it?" 

Mal chuckled again. "You wouldn't want to waste the beer." 

There was a pause, punctuated by the thin cry of the wind. _Beer...?_ John Crichton's blue gaze narrowed and he stepped closer to Mal. Winona still pointed downwards. 

He sized up the man standing before him. The long brown leather duster, reminding of a classic Western, the scuffed boots, the leather holster. He was hatless, and the gun hand, relaxed by his side, was by no means unready. His weapon - it looked like a Colt .44 Army Revolver, circa The Civil War - was primed, just like his own Winona. He looked like he had just stepped out of a Sam Peckinpah movie. The way his body was evenly balanced on both feet, belied the resident tension behind the light joking words. The hooded eyes, bluer than his own, a deep layer of singular color, unlike so many multi-colored alien eyes he'd had occasion to look into. A definitive color, unlike Aeryn's sometimes-grey sometimes-blue eyes... 

"You're not - Sebacean?" 

"What's Sebacean?" 

"Peacekeeper?" 

"Asked and answered, friend," Mal's hand tightened marginally on his gun and tried to sound benevolently amused. "I'm human as you are. Or near enough." 

Crichton's knees seemed to buckle a little, and he stepped even closer to cover the gaff, examining Mal with his unwavering laser-blue gaze. 

"Human?" he whispered harshly. "You're human? From Earth?" 

"More'n a couple of generations removed from Earth-that-was, but yeah." 

It was then that John began to notice a slight numbness at the base of his skull. It was nothing overly marked, simply a _lack_ of something undefinable. He paused, checking surreptitiously with Harvey, but no one had been home for a while there. He reached back absently, brushing the nape of his neck in a gesture reminiscent of Crais talking to Talyn. 

Pieces fell into place all at once, several realizations coalescing together into one stunning conclusion. There were an annoying number of these epiphanies occurring in John Crichton's life lately, but this one threw him for an absolute loop. 

The first mental connect he made was _his translator microbes weren't translating._ He was actually _hearing_ a language he never thought he would again with naked ears and unfiltered brain. He had lived with translator microbes for so many cycles that kicking-starting his own language lobe seemed like firing up his granddaddy's mothballed 8-cyclinder. The second mental connect: ergo, the man standing before him wasn't from the Unchartered Territories or another bi-pedal, bilaterally symmetrical technicolor alien; he was frelling _human._

Distractedly, he holstered Winona, took a step and reached forward blindly, grasping a surprised Mal Reynolds by the shoulders, if to convince himself the man was real. Mal reacted instanteously, slapping away the hand and stepping back, gun drawn and raised. He stared at the deranged man who stood before him, hands held out and open, and was momentarily stopped dead by the gut-punched expression that filled the light blue eyes - a reflection of something frighteningly profound. 

John blinked, hard. "E-Earth-that-was?" 

"Ain't much for ancient history, Commander." 

"Ancient... " John turned his back on the gun and squinted towards the brightening horizon. Bright volcanic gases lit the low hills in an eerie red and blue glow. He thought he could even see lava floes. In the lightening sky, the unstable rumbling corona of the sun hovered just at the level of the hilltops. He turned back to Mal, the slight flicker in his eyes noting that Mal had lowered and holstered his weapon. _This was a man not unused to sudden violence,_ Mal thought. 

"Ancient. What year is this?" 

Mal looked non-plussed. 

John shrugged but his whole demeanor was trigger-wire intense. "Crazy man from outer space. Humor me. What year?" 

"2513," said Mal. And, just to be a smart-ass, he added, "A.D." 

The sudden laughter that bubbled out of the man was more than slightly maniacal, edged with hysteria. 

"Man, I gotta get a new travel agent!" He seemed to recover a little, although he was still chuckling, albeit less maniacally. He brushed at the tears that spilled over; Mal wasn't at all fooled that they were tears of joy. "At least I didn't go backwards." 

"Backwards?" 

"In time." 

It was now Mal's turn for a healthy dose of skepticism. "You sayin' you're from - the past? 

"In a galaxy far, far away." John trailed off. 

Mal Reynolds' limits for the fantastical were swiftly approaching critical mass. Aliens and time-travel ranked high on his list of shadow-puppet faerie-stories for the over-educated and those with too much time on their hands. And yet when he looked over at that improbable man with his improbable flying machine, the shoulders hunched from too much personal strife, still trying to laugh at the absurdities of his life, he couldn't help but feel a stab of empathy. Mal Reynolds understood losses that went soul-deep, that threatened to drown out the sunlight of the spirit. 

Other people's spirits. Nuthin' to do with his own. 

The landscape behind John had brightened considerably, casting his already dark-clad figure into deeper silhouette. Glowing gasses fogged the grounds, increasing the sulfurous odors. Taller rocks were brightly haloed against the rising sun - 

  * and something moved --* 



John was already turning and aiming when Mal fired off his first rounds, ducking to the right where an outcrop of rocks marked the beginning of a low ridge. Something fired back, hitting the ground at his feet, and he dived after Mal, sliding behind the rocks in a cloud of dust. Pulse fire and hydraulic bullets shattered the air, and a dark deformed figure flung up arms and fountained blood behind the nearest rock outcropping. 

In the sudden lull, John said, "What the hell are those?" 

"Reavers," he snarled. "You brought gorram Reavers!" 

"Hey, they almost hit _me._ I was wormhole surfing just fine, minding my own damn business." 

Mal looked at John directly now. "Wormholes? You have a real flare for the fantastical, son." 

"And you should get out more, Jesse James. Excuse me." A small movement over Mal's shoulder caught John's eye, and he brought Winona around, steadying his forearm unceremoniously across Mal's left shoulder and firing true. From the left flank, another figure, horrifyingly less than human, gave a blood-curdling scream and collapsed in a mess of twisted limbs and tattered rags. In the growing sunlight, John thought he saw metal sutures stitching rows and patterns in the exposed skin, across chest and face, back and belly. 

_Every frelling planet._ "What the hell are Reavers?" 

"Men," Mal bit off. He fired a short volley, the Colt's hydraulic projectile system singing in his hand. "On the edge of the Rim, too long in the black, the nothing. Men." 

"Yeah? Well, they cut me off _inside_ the wormhole." John reset Winona and braced himself on the rock again. "You ever think they're maybe not from your neck of the universe?" 

In the lull that followed, there was only silence. Out in the flat, the two bodies of the Reavers lay sprawled in grotesque angles, one of them still twitching a little in its death throes, black blood staining the parched yellow ground. John stared at them for a long time, the bile rising in his throat the way it never did with aliens, no matter how grotesque or squelchy or slimy or gooey. That was because these _weren't_ alien; they were human. 

Mal ducked back down behind the rock. 

"They're re-grouping," he said. "They'll be back." 

"Why? What do they want?" 

"They're hungry and they're cannibalistic." Mal looked over at his companion, his eyes flat and hard. "They rape, they torture, they consume - organs and sweetbreads first. And if they want you alive to recruit you - they'll force you to watch." 

"Great," muttered John. "Kissing cousins to the Charrids." 

"They're men, nothing more. There's no such things as aliens." 

"Yeah, well, in _my_ neck of the woods, I got more aliens than you could shake your Remington Musket at. Multi-colored, multi-pedal, helium-farting, bad-tempered, metal-melting ... and those are my friends! And - " John settled himself next to Mal. "I'm from Earth. Original issue. Not Earth-That-Was. Earth. With the blue oceans and white clouds and baseball in the summer -" 

Both men spied movements coming in opposite directions at the same time. They moved with almost synchronized coordination. Both rose instantly to their feet; John ducking down and around, firing past Mal's hip, and Mal, rising up and over, shooting across John's shoulder. Pulse blasts and projectiles whined and popped through the air, followed by more disembodied screams, black blood and flailing limbs. 

Followed by sudden deafening quiet. 

Both men were frozen in their tableau, black leather and brown suede kissing-close. Neither man was breathing, eyes and ears wide open, waiting. Distant geothermal rumbles hovered in the background, but the two men heard nothing other than each other's shallow breaths and steady heartbeats from their too-close proximity. Of a mind, they both relaxed and pulled away, a flicker of acknowledgement in their eyes for the mutual helping hand, and the guy-thing aversion of same for the too-tight nearness. 

"Did you see anything else besides the grappling hook?" asked Mal, dropping back behind the rock. 

John followed him down. "Big-ass piece of dren - er, shit. The Goodyear blimp on steroids." 

"Dirigible?" 

"Yeah. Primary tail engine, secondaries on the wings. Nasty-looking." 

"La shi, it's another ruttin' Trans-U. Damn," said Mal. "Trans-U's can carry least a couple of dozen Reavers." 

"Can they land?" 

Mal looked at him. "All ships can land." 

"Not leviathans," said John dismissively. Then he paused, catching Mal's look askance. "It hurts them." 

"Fa kuang," Mal muttered. 

"Son, this is a I-took-my-lithium-at-breakfast day. You should catch me on a really crazy-making morning." John paused for a moment, realizing that he'd understood - what? - Mandarin? He filed this little factoid - _translator microbes work for other Earth languages, too_ \- in the corner of his brain reserved for other numerous and mostly useless trivia. 

He checked the cartridges in Winona, and sat back. The corona of the sun had almost breached the horizon and it was getting warmer and more sulfurous-smelling. Behind them, the still-darkened sky was a deep midnight purple. Sitting in the penumbral pre-dawn shadow of the planet, glowing tantalizingly blue like a wintry Christmas ornament, was the wormhole, lustrous and sparkling with the reflected sunlight, it's tail waving oh so gently in the ether. He nudged his companion. 

"Look up, Malcolm," he said, softly. "Share the wonders I've seen." 

Mal tilted his head towards the still-dark skies. There wasn't much in the 'verse anymore that could make Mal Reynolds gape. But he ruttin' gaped. 

"Still don't believe in wormholes?" 

"Shun-sheng duh gao-wahn... " 

_Holy testicle Tuesday?_ John tried not to smirk. _Had to remember that one._

"Not the best example of my work. Smallish. Tad unstable." He cocked his eye critically at the wormhole. "Obviously a bit whacked in the chronospectrum - gotta fix that next time around. But there ya go - wormhole rising." 

"Wuh de tyen ah... Where - " Mal choked off, then slowly turned disbelieving eyes on John. "Where are you ruttin' from?" 

"Told you. Earth. Originally." John leaned back, Winona hanging loosely between his knees, he rattled off, "OK, here's the short version. Astronaut. Test flight. Solar flare. Sucked into a wormhole. Popped out in the sphincter-end of the universe, the Unchartered Territories. So far on the other side of creation that there wasn't one star, one cluster, one frelling planetary nebula in common for an astronomical reference." 

"How long - ?" 

"Over three cycles - years." 

Mal shook his head. "No. No, I mean, how far -?" 

"At sub-light speeds using alien technology you could only dream about - sixty cycles - years. Which is great if you know which direction to point the damn thing." John chuckled, without mirth. "And here's the kicker - I left Earth in 1999. Approximated the neighborhood but missed by 500 years, give or take a few." He shook his head. "Bad timing. Story of my life." 

Mal leaned back, seemingly unable to take his eyes off the pretty swirling siren of a vortex. "And anyone can fly in or out of this thing? 

"Nope. Turns most other technologies into runny red goo." 

Mal cast a dubious glance over at the tiny bruised and blackened Farscape module. "But not in that thing?" 

"My module jams in wormholes." John looked up now, fixing Mal with his stare. "My turn. So I left Earth sitting pretty. Blue and green, with white wispy clouds. Some pollution, hole in the ozone, a little global warming, sure, but she was still all there." He leaned forward intently. "What the frell did you people do to her?" 

Mal refused to back down from the accusatory gaze. "Earth was - used up. Depleted resources, accumulating pollution, no ozone left to speak of, hot house gasses, extreme weather, seismic activity on the rise. They went out and terra-formed hundreds of other earths. Everybody left before the party got hot. No one actually saw Earth die. Too busy trying to survive all the new earths. 

"Some planets don't take kindly to terra-forming," he patted the yellow ground beside him. "Take Perdition, for instance. Reverting back to her gaia configuration, as we speak. Last of the settlers left more'n two years ago. In a couple of years, there probably won't be any stable ground to land on. But most other planets become all levels of habitable. Settlers come here with the minimal for survival, genetic grainseed and livestock DNA, government land deed clutched in their hand and the hope for maybe a new and better life." 

"You mean, you wipe out the indigenous life, so you can become the indigenous life?" said John darkly. "Man, that's worse than burning down the rainforest to build a shopping mall." 

"New frontiers come at a price. Core planets - rich established planets - are run by the Alliance. There's some fools didn't agree with them and went to war. Lost. They were the Independents. That was gone 6 years. There's a few of us Browncoats don't cotton to Core life." Mal's gaze flicked up to meet John's, who tilted his head in acknowledgement. "Welcome to the Rim, John Crichton. The furthest you can get from the arm of the Alliance, closest to the real black of space. The edge of the galaxy. Where the Reavers live." 

The slight skittering scramble across sand had both men on their feet again, guns up and blazing. It was a half dozen of the deformed humans this time, scrambling from three directions across the open ground, with jury-rigged firearms and clumsy weapons. It was a turkey-shoot; Mal and John had no problems picking them off. When the dust settled, there were more bodies scattered on the ground and two tightly-wound guys, standing side by side, breathing a little hard. 

"Why do they do that? Why the scattershot melees?" John was back below the rocks, shoulder to shoulder with Mal. 

"Works on terrified civilians, they shoot at anything waves in the wind. And most settlers are bad shots. Runs 'em out of ammo real quick. They don't leave no survivors." Mal squinted up at the bright morning sky. "Perdition'll get real hot real soon. Geothermals and magnetics play havoc with propulsion and nav sats. We'll have to wait until sundown. Fortunately, this is Perdition's winter hemisphere, and it will be a short day. But we will need to find shelter." 

"What about our rides in the parking lot?" 

"Reavers ain't interested in hardware, only the meat on the bone." 

"You got people coming for you?" 

"Yeah. But that Trans-U will outrun any short atmo propulsion. Keeping ahead of the junker ain't the problem - even full throttle, Serenity can't outrun that magnetic grappler." 

John looked grim as he surveyed the far ridge where the Reavers came from. "So we take care of this one on the ground." 

They both locked gazes and spoke at exactly the same moment. 

"I've got a plan ..." 

* * *

John held up the small double-A battery with both care and skepticism. "This is a grenade?" 

"It's a Grizwald," replied Mal. "Smaller ones can go in apples, pears. For when your enemies get hungry." 

"Nasty." He held up the crescent incendiary stolen off the command carrier, taped to the Grizwald. "The Peacekeeper incendiary should set off the Grizwald, and we should get enough of a bang out of them." 

The two men were crouched down side by side. Below the rocky ridge, the plain stretched out into the morning heat, shrouded in vapor and choking fumes. The bulk of the Trans-U stood on its landing gear like some huge predatory bug, blocking the sunlight. It's quietly creaking hull was still cooling down as it stood on its own thruster-burns in the sand. On the side of the battered fuselage by the grappling hook, an opening yawned, but nothing moved around it or inside it. 

They had a grand total of three of the cobbled-together bombs, and three spare Grizwalds left. John sighted down Winona's barrel, listening to her wind up. Mal readied his last clip and checked the rifle strapped to his leg. Both looked over the top of their rocky cover, checking out the terrain around the Trans-U one last time. Behind the Trans-U, the plain stretched out in jagged rocks and shifted fissures, shallow lakes that burbled thick soupy liquids, a blasted riven landscape. 

_This end of the universe pretty well sucks, too,_ thought John. Winona primed, he glanced over at his companion. 

Mal carried an eerily relaxed air about him, although there was a tautness that hung thick. He checked over his hardware, his movements practiced and smooth, his demeanor had a too-calm stillness. "Try not to get in too close. Reavers run their boats without core containment - radiation levels are off the scale." He missed John's reaction to that, the frisson of a panic that flickered across his face. Mal sighted unnecessarily down his rifle one last time, adding, "Heard tell, just seeing Reavers - s'like seeing our future damnation - messes with your mind." 

John grinned to cover his earlier consternation. "Too late, Malcolm. I've been mind-frelled by the best!" 

"When we're done here, you can be explaining that to me over the beer I'll be buying you." 

"Deal." John drew a breath. "Let's do this thing." 

* * *

Moving until the hatchway was in plain sight, Mal straightened up from behind the rocks. A brief movement further out along the flank told him that John was almost in place. In the darkened interior of the craft, he thought he could see some sort of movement. A fission of fear threatened to burble up from his gut, but he tamped it down hard. Too many Reaver horror stories - exaggerated, he reminded himself firmly - added to their mystique and took their psychological toll. He almost wished he had John Crichton's lack of knowledge and acculturation of their existence. 

Almost. He'd just as soon not deal with _aliens._

Far over on the flank, he saw John make his way down the slope towards the stern of the Trans-U. He straightened up and drew both weapons. 

Began walking. 

It took them some time to notice, it seemed. But he was ready for them when they began to come out of the ship. His guns began spitting fire and death, and the first of the Reavers emerging were being cut down. 

Scrambling over the last of the rocks, John began to cross the distance to the stern of the vessel. The primary and secondary thrusters were huge ugly barrel ends that reeked of unrefined fuel, still smoking in the mid-morning heat. He could hear scrambling from within, but he didn't miss a step, Winona armed and ready in his left hand, a jury rigged grenade in his right. Around front, the sound of gunfire. 

Movement caught his eye, and Winona was singing in his hand. An too-human scream followed by a scraping thud, as a form fell from a port over a tailfin. John pulled to a stop some distance from the primary thruster. The stench of unprocessed rocket fuel was almost overpowering. The deeply concave exhaust housing went back a ways, but he could see where it came to a point. That was his target - a 2-foot hole he had to hit from about 50 feet. Holding Winona lefthanded like a baseball mitt, he primed the grenade to the maximum and hefted it. 

"Ryan takes the sign, and the windup..." he reared back, took a huge step forward and threw with everything he had. "Fastball - inside and low!" 

The grenade clattered against the housing noisily. From the same port above, more movement. He fired, listening for the body thud. He primed the second grenade, holding it behind him as he squinted down at 'home plate'. 

"Runner on base, here comes the pitch ... " He took a couple of steps this time, his arm cartwheeling. "Split-finger fastball - belt-high outside. Swing and a miss!" 

Again the metallic crash. He brought the pulse pistol crosswise to pick off the figure scuttling around from the right. Further away, the sound of muffled gunfire. The last grenade primed, John reared back one last time. 

"Two on, two out, bottom of the 9th. From the stretch -" 

He pitched with all the remaining strength in his arm, and watched, eyes fixed and gun forgotten, as the grenade sailed into the maw, out of the sunlight, and right into the small opening at the back of the housing. 

He crowed mightily and flung his hands up. "Nuthin' but net!" 

He even began a victory dance, until the whining sound of the grenade priming for ignition stopped him. 

"Oh, shit!" 

He turned and ran, transferring Winona to his right hand as he skirted the ship. Reavers were emerging everywhere from inside, and he fired on the run. Whatever distance between him and the ship was quickly eaten up by their scrambling almost four-legged gait. He laid down covering fire and then turned and ran as hard as he could. Coming around the grappler, he could see Mal standing his ground, firing both the handgun and the rifle, the riflebutt propped against his hip, his face like riven stone. 

Behind him, the first Reavers were closing. He was a hundred or so feet from Mal's position, when he saw the rifle muzzle swing his way. He jinxed left hard, heard the rifle's deep booming report and even felt heatwake brush by him, heard the resulting body thud behind. He kept his feet and kept running. 

"Fire in the hole!" he yelled. 

He was almost to Mal when he heard the first grenade go. The initial explosion sounded tinny and small. It was followed by a second, equally ineffectual. But the third explosion was different. The double concussion echoed deeply, reverberating as if from some hellsfire abyss. And then John was on Mal, tackling him and taking him down on his ass, as the fireball rumbled low and loud, lighting up the ass-end of the Trans-U in a chain-reaction firestorm that engulfed the ship from stern to stem. 

Mal went down still firing. John, his left arm around Mal's waist, twisted about. Both men stared in stunned fascination as the Trans-U was slowly swallowed by the ball of deep orange flame that seem to expand silently, before the ground-shaking boom could catch up with it. And then two pairs of blue eyes widened and both men flattened themselves against the ground as the firestorm reached out, skirting over them, fed by sudden volcanic combustible gasses from new fissures that began to form in the ground around the Trans-U. 

The Colt was empty, and Mal tossed it aside. He never took his eyes off the conflagration, watching as burning figures moved within the inferno, obliterated now and then by debris and smoke. He sat up, shouldering the rifle and firing into the thick smoke. The nearest figure, engulfed in flames, flung its arms up and collapsed. 

John squinted around and spotted more figures loping towards them, grossly human-like screams of rage cutting over the roar of the firestorm. Between too-quick heartbeats, he took out one on the left flank, distractedly listening to the boom of Mal's rifle taking out another on the right. Somewhere in the chaos of the fire, thundering explosions shook the ground, the temblor building on itself. Something huge seemed to crash, and new towers of raw flame and black smoke skewered the skies, igniting the trace combustibles in Perdition's atmo. 

"We gotta go!" John screamed at the top of his lungs. Mal couldn't actually hear him, but his meaning was plain as day. They scrambled to their feet, buffeted by the fire winds fueled to tornado strength by the hissing fissures, forming its own weather cell, spitting raw heat, flaming debris and toxic smoke in every direction. 

They managed to reach the rocks surrounding the flat and half-scrambled, half-fell behind its meager cover. The wind whipped at them, the roar a deafening torrent. The choking smoke cleared for a few moments around them, and the small hairs rising on the back of his neck made Mal turn around. He could barely see in the smoke, but he shouldered the rifle, waiting. John followed his lead without thinking, squinting into the blinding haze. 

One figure slipped in and out of the smoke, and Mal squeezed. A hollow click greeted him, despairingly loud, echoing on the empty cartridge. 

"Tzao gao. I'm out." 

John grasped Winona with both hands, sighting into the fog. When he squeezed the trigger, the electronic whine told him the same damn thing. 

"I don't frelling believe this!" 

Mal reached into his pocket and fished out the three remaining Grizwalds. He tossed them into the sand that had been marked by their footsteps, leading into the rocks. Then he grabbed John by a handful of leather coat and yanked him back. 

And not a moment too soon. 

The Reaver emerged out of the toxic smoke like an apparition of seventh level of hell, rags charred and smoking, skin blistered and curled, the metal sutures stitching rows across face and neck the glow red with the heat. Its hair had burned to the scalp, the red-raw skin hanging in patches. But the most horrific thing about it wasn't even its semi-human gait on fire-charred limbs, or the flattened sutures embedded in the clavicles and ribs that reminded John, insanely, of D'Argo. It was the torn-open eye-sockets, held together by more sutures made it seem skull-like, the whites of the eyes starkly visible, surrounding light-brown irises that were horrifically and entirely too ordinary and human. 

The thing snarled and lunged forward, following their footsteps. Its blistered blackened foot came down on one of the small battery-like objects in the sand, and the tinny subdued whine was the only warning of the rapidly priming grenade. 

Mal grabbed the stunned and staring John with both hands and hauled with all his strength, yanking them both down to the ground with force. His arms around him, holding him tightly and unconsciously close, he scrambled backwards, and managed to find some meager cover when the priming whine stopped. 

Unable to help themselves, both men looked back. 

The explosion shot upward from its feet, the concussion coalescing at a point about four feet above the ground, in the creature's gut, shattering flesh, metal, organs and bone with a disturbingly quiet pop. The smell of ozone and burning flesh accompanied the shower of blood and tissue mist mixing with the dust. Bits of rag, skin and hair fluttered to the ground, empty of something to hold them up, the smell of charred blood and flash-cooked meat sweet and sickening. 

Eventually, the hail of body bits eased off. Both men looked up cautiously at the same time. Where the Reaver had stood, there was an even splattering of fine blood-colored sand. They dragged themselves up and pushed away from the red spot, more than a little relieved that the wind had been blowing away from them. 

A hollow pause, broken by a hysterical giggle. "Gotta love a plan that works!" 

Lying next to him, Mal looked a little of all of relieved, happy and sick. "Qingwa cao de liumang!" 

John turned his head, the backwash of adrenaline still pumping through his veins, fueling more laughter. " _Frog-humping_ son of a bitch?" 

* * *

"...one more thing, Wash. You'll see a big blue vortex on your way in. Give it a wide berth." 

"A big blue what -- ?" 

"Can't miss it. Just stay the hell away from it." 

"Mal - who is that?" 

"Crazy man from outer space." Mal smirked. "I'll be up to dock at sundown." 

In Perdition's blistering winter afternoon, Mal and John had found themselves a cool and shadowed shelter from the killing heat. Higher up on the jagged slopes of the ridge, large boulders had fallen into haphazard piles, forming niches and crevices and caves that were deeply sheltered from the sun. From that vantage point, they could see both the shuttle and the module on one side, rolled into the growing shade of the hillside, and, further off in the distance, the still-smoldering, still occasionally exploding remains of the Trans-U. What remained of its hull sitting in a 50-foot deep crater surrounded by new fissures and crevices all over the unstable ground. 

Mal was dismissive. "Perdition's so volatile, I doubt any of this will be here in a couple of weeks." 

John grinned inanely at him. "I can't tell you how nice it is to hear Earth units of measure again. Miles, minutes, hours, weeks. No microts, monens, denches or metras." 

Mal had dragged his crate up to the cave, and now he set it on the stone floor between them. Despite the cool shadows of the little cave, it was still a hot wind that blew in, and both men had doffed their longcoats. Mal broke open the crate and pulled a frosty bottle of Krne lager from its cool-pack. It was brewed in an earth-that-was style brewery, and when its old fashioned bottlecap was twisted off, it produced an in-swirl of supercold air, and a frothing of head that shot up the narrow neck that John had to be quick to save. 

Mal watched, amused, as an expression of an ecstasy so pure and undiluted as to be beyond sexual, washed over John's face. 

As the cold bitter bite of the lager filled his senses, his mind flew back to Saturday afternoon football games, Superbowls and family barbeques that were now less than a memory. So much of his life then was so different from his life now that he had to literally force himself to stop thinking about it, or succumb to unmanly tears. 

Mal must have seen the extreme shifts of emotion, brief as they were. He reached back into the crate and handed him a bao; the pork dumpling was even still a little warm. After a moment's examination, John took a bite. The sweet white bread and the sweet moist meat inside immediately registered on tastebuds, the blue eyes fluttering dramatically. 

"I've tasted these before. Chinatown, New York. Man, I love these!" 

"Hot or cold, good any time of day, self-packaged for the road." Mal took a bite. "Not so common back then?" 

John shook his head, still eating appreciatively. "My life was bitter and deprived." 

So Mal pulled out bigger guns, and tossed him something red. John caught the MacIntosh apple one handed. It was followed by an offering of strawberries. Strawberries! His long-dormant senses were battered by the bitter and the crisp and the oh-so-tart-sweet familiar tastes and aromas of home. Each foamy swallow, each sweet crunch, each tart and succulent burst of berry-flesh and seed was a callback to something he'd never thought to experience again. His eyes rolled up in a backwash of sensory ecstasy of tasting home; home that was not home. 

Mal shook his head - watching John Crichton eat earth foods was like watching pornography. 

So, in the long hours of the volatile combustible afternoon of Perdition, the two men, so alike and so different, from so close and yet universes apart, began to talk. John found, to his slight disappointment, that Mal had not the slightest concept of professional sports or stock car racing. Mal was a rancher, and a soldier, a country boy. John was a theoretical physicist, an astronaut, an urbanite. And they were 500 years of common pop culture apart. But some things - home, family, lovers - were universal. And making their way slowly through the bao, apples, strawberries and beer, John Crichton finally had his first human male-to-male conversation in an eon, and Malcolm Reynolds found himself in the oddest position of sharing his history, his loves, and even his darknesses, with a man from the other side of the universe, from the other end of time. 

Or perhaps it was because their natural caution was softened by the post-adrenal rush, the battle camaraderie, the beer, and the fact that both knew they would part ways for good at sundown, that they began to share their lives with the unfiltered honesty only possible between complete and passing strangers. 

And so John learned about eerie-ass naked girls leaping out of boxes, heisting hovertrains and Core hospitals, dead-body smuggling, mighty fine shindigs that ended in swordplay, sad mudder towns with statues of odd people, provincial settlers who believed in witchcraft, midnight kisses and other states of unconsciousness, cities floating over oceans, the difference between Companions and whores, waking up married... 

"-waitaminit. You're married?" 

Mal held up a slightly unsteady hand. "Only on the planet of the Triumph settlers. Nowheres else in the 'verse would one glass of mulled wine and a dance with a pretty girl gave me a leafy hat count as bein' ruttin' married." 

"Was she cute?' 

"An absolute knockout. And - " Mal's tone became conspiratorial, "- a true redhead. But dangerous and psychotic." 

"The best kind." John chuckled throatily into his beer. "At least she wasn't a princess." 

"You? Married too?" 

"Uh-huh." 

"Pretty?" 

"She's a _princess_!" 

"That don't matter. It didn't last? 

"The kicker was that right after the ceremony, we were gonna be turned into statues for the next 80 years." 

There was a disbelieving pause that was broken by a burst of laughter. Slightly hysterical, slightly tipsy laughter. 

And Mal went on to learn about helium farts, people who were plants, schizophrenic teenage gunships, energy-guzzling creatures the size of gas giants, critters of all kinds - Halosians, keedvas, Vorcs, Hanjis, budongs, Hodian Trill-bats. He learned about blowing up Gammak bases, shadow depositories and command carriers for fun and profit, got familiar with all manner of aliens colorful in physical fact and psychological makeup, came to know about neural chips and neural clones, flax nets - 

"Hey - we got those, too," interrupted Mal. "Chop shops use electromagnetic nets. Snag ships for spare parts. Limng bastards." 

"Ours are Zenetan pirates," supplied John. "But be careful around one - you can't tell the females from the males, and they both hit on you big time." 

As the day began to show the first signs of waning along with the winding down of adrenaline and effects of the beer, the talk became a little more serious. 

Mal came to know the man in black whose life consisted of powerful terrifying enemies and closer-than-blood friends, of some losses almost too great to bear, of a yearning for home, of fluctuating loyalties, of intrigue and obsessions, of things never being as they seemed, of factions clashing and devastating wars brewing around his very existence. A man who could hop through wormholes, and who now had half of his end of the universe after him because of it. 

And John looked over at the man in the brown buttoned shirt who sat across from him, giving him his longed-for taste of home. The man who already lost his birth family and his war. His faith was a casualty of the Battle of Serenity Valley on Hera, slain in the vale of the dying. In the aftermath, he lost the rest of his remaining innocence in the Reconstruction, fueling his journey to the Rim to find his freedom and his autonomy, because he had no other faith left to sustain him. A man who didn't believe in aliens and wormholes. A man - one of a very few who still lived - who faced, fought and bested Reavers. More than once. 

So different, they were. And so alike. 

Finally, as the fiery sun began to flame towards the glowing horizon, they came to talk about matters of the heart. Their loves. Old loves, regretted loves, loves that should never have happened, loves that might have been. And slowly, eventually, they came to talk about current loves, the unattainable ones they woke up to each morning and thought about and yearned for curled into bed each night. The ones that everything seemed to come back to, that centered their 'verses and anchored their ships. 

So Mal heard about a woman with long black hair and deep blue-grey eyes, a pilot and a soldier. Who reminded him of Zoey, she was so practical and capable. This magnificent beauty of John's could kick any alien ass that got in her way, could sharp-shoot anything from a pulse pistol to portable missile launchers, and who went against every cold hard pragmatic dictum to which she had been bred, to find compassion and caring and love, to become the true self that John knew all along was there. She was of a different race, a different culture, sometimes so alien and so frustrating, but at other times so incredibly, sweetly, vulnerably human. Who had saved his butt more times than he cared to count, as she was quite happy to point out. 

And John heard about another woman with long dark hair, dark-eyed and beauteous. Of astounding ability and talent. Of incredible learning and skill - someone extremely well-read, intimidatingly well-educated, and could wield a rapier like a master swordsman. A woman of incomparable elegance and mystery, unattainable, unreachable - and trapped in the forbidding tower of her profession. Forever surrounded by an impenetrable moat of luscious silks and fine brocades, wafting incense and expensive perfumes from her fortifications, gentrifying the rough-hewn world of the Rim. Too fine for a farm boy like him. But who'd saved his butt a fair number of times as well. 

Neither offered comment or advice. Each man told his tale with unvarnished yearned-for honesty, each listened and understood, and that was all either really wanted. 

* * *

Perditions' sunset was fiery and red, turbulent and broiling, as the sun did not give up its diurnal reign without a struggle. That evening, with the encroaching cold and thinning atmosphere, the sun displayed a maelstrom of coronal mass ejections and solar plages that was awe-inspiring and more than a little frightening. Hanging high in the darkening skies, the opalescent swirling wormhole, its interior a luminous beckoning blue, as it turned towards like the sun like a light-hungry sunflower. 

Their ships primed and waiting, the two men, dressed in their leather dusters, stepped towards each other, their forms silhouetted in the fiery crimson glow of sunset. Both men stood for long moments, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the terrible beauty of the volcanic sun backlit by stars and decorated by the anomaly of the waiting wormhole. 

They turned to face each other at the same time, and Mal extended his hand. With a small smile, John responded. Their hands gripped firmly, and then it was John who stepped forward, pulling Mal into a tight embrace. A fleeting initial physical resistance from the other man evaporated, and then the rarest of wonders; Malcolm Reynolds permitting another into the circle of his arms. Allowing this crazy man from the other side of creation to breach, even if only briefly, his own impenetrable fortifications of heart, body and soul. And for John Crichton, the tactile contact with another true human, the radiating warmth, the solid reality of flesh under his hands, the aroma of leather clothing and human skin - was restorative in ways he couldn't yet wrap his mind around. 

Eventually, the two figures separated, small silhouettes against the blasted hellish landscape, turning to board his own craft. 

The module went first, taking its short taxi before its snub nose pointed skyward and afterburners cut a swath of glowing air in the combustible atmosphere. The shuttle's vertical take off was less spectacular; her wings extending fully on the turn, before she took off towards Serenity in orbit. 

* * *

They were already all gathered on the bridge when Mal strode in, all staring at the wormhole as if they'd never seen the like. Which, of course, they hadn't. He ignored the vision, sat himself in the coms seat across from Wash and keyed open all communication frequencies. By the by the hiss of empty radio snow was replaced by a whine and a raspy staticky voice. 

"This is Farscape One. Do you copy, Serenity?" 

"We're here, John." 

The vid screen flared to clarity, and the crew of the Serenity, now gathered around Mal, pressed in to get a better look at the Crazy Man From Outer Space. John grinned at him. 

"Oh, hey there. Family." John squinted at the screen, seeing the multiple curious faces. Standing right behind Mal was a fair-skinned dark-haired woman, lush red silks and fine black lace emphasizing her stunning dark-eyed beauty - that must be Inara. Mal had exquisite taste indeed. He flicked his eyes back to the captain with a sly grin. "You didn't say how gorgeous, though." 

Mal smiled, purposely obfuscating. "It's one of our better days." 

"Well, glad that you're home safe. I like walking my first dates to the porch." 

Mal knew some of the crew were now looking at the back of his head, but he studiously ignored them. He checked the wide-scan proximity sensors. 

"You're clear, John. Nothing in the black in this system. No space junk, no scows, no Alliance, no Reavers." 

"The wormhole's going to be pulled in on my wake, so watch out for riptides and hot spots. You're far away enough, shouldn't feel much more than a ripple." John reached to the side and flipped a couple of switches, and then threw at the screen his most charming grin. "Thanks for the strawberries, little Kaylee." 

"Strawberries?" the petite one in the greasy overalls turned and smacked Mal on the arm, her little-girl voice tragic. "There were strawberries?" 

The vid-signal suddenly crackled and the picture began to destabilize over John's infectious grin. Mal punched the gain, and the picture returned, a little ragged around the edges. 

"That's your cue." 

The two men smiled at each other across the space and static, sharing the comrade-warmth of the post-battle and the hours after. "Adios, Malcolm. It was all kinds of fun." 

"Adios, John. Buen viaje." 

All eyes turned to the front portal. The tiny module caught a reflection off the sun, and darted like a bright-lit arrowhead towards the swirling blue vortex. The bridge of the Serenity was silent as they watched the module begin a barrel-roll, could hear the open audio channel crackle as John began a rebel-whoop that dissolved into a roar of white noise. 

The module's bright signature flared for a moment, and then disappeared. The wormhole shuddered, wobbled, and then began to collapse on itself, swiftly and soundlessly, in a bright flash that cleared to silent shockwave and empty space. As if nothing had ever been there at all. 

Very quietly so no one else heard, Mal murmured, "Godspeed, John Crichton." 

* * *

The wormhole roller-coaster ride was smooth going back, and he burst into normal space without anymore wormhole freeway incidents. He felt rather than saw that weird ectoplasmic concussion that wormholes had when they closed up on themselves and turned off. But he was too busy being immediately bombarded by a broad-channel hail that bore the unmistakable signature from Moya. 

_Aw, mom was worried about him._

"-Commander Crichton, Moya has your coordinates and we have you locked on. Docking web in 60 microts, " came the familiar worried-all-the-time voice of Pilot. 

"Honey, I'm ho-oome!" 

"John - where have you been?" Aeryn's too-steady voice masking her worry. "You've been gone for arns." 

Just then, Moya slid into his portal's view. She hung there in space, in front of a cerulean blue and gentian violet nebula, a distant double-galaxy in the background and bright star clusters and pink dust clouds weaving layers of light and dark across the interstellar painting. He felt the docking web snag comfortingly around the module like a welcome-home hug. Moya now hung large in his portal, looking golden and gorgeous. 

"I've been at the other end of the 'verse, baby. Fighting bad guys, blowing up things and drinking beer." 

"So, just another day in the park?" 

"Day at the office. Walk in the park." He corrected absently. He kept staring at the approaching hull and docking bay, thinking that his beautiful Aeryn was rivaled, at least today, by Moya's lustrous golden frame. 

"I'm just - happy to be back," he said, simply. 

He cut the engines, leaned back and let Moya do all the work, ushering him back into the fold. He thought about the sleek praying-mantis-like hull of the firefly, her turbine fins turning in a steady rhythm, so much smaller and quicker than the leviathan, and as beloved of her captain as Moya had become to him. 

He thought about the other lost soul across space and time, so like himself, another wayfaring stranger roaming the black, sailing his sky, never in one place for too long. 

Who, in his ship, had all that he now called family and home. 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title:   **Detours: Perdition Redux**   
Series Name:   **Perdition**   
Author:   **Shan**   
Details:   **Series**  |  **R**  |  **gen**  |  **59k**  |  **08/12/04**   
Characters:  Malcolm \- John Crichton   
Pairings:  None   
Crossover with: Farscape   
Summary:  Reaver territory and wormholes don't mix well.   
Notes:  Unlike it's predecessor, this isn't slash at all. This is dedicated to all who are Browncoat-Scapers, I know y'all are out there because so many of you were at the Comic Con 2004 in San Diego. And to Peach, first human eyes on this text.   
Sequel to:  Perdition   
  



End file.
